He closed the door behind him and stood before it for a long moment, just staring at me.

I knew how to read Vincent by now, and I knew that his annoyance fought with his relief—as if Vincent the king and Vincent the father waged a silent battle behind his eyes.

“What are you doing here?” he said.

That was Vincent the king.

“You made it back from the Crescent trial.”

And that—that thankful exhale—was Vincent the father. He stepped closer, a strange uncertainty flickering over his face. Maybe he saw the difference in my expression, too.

“Salinae.” My voice was hard and too rough. “You destroyed Salinae.”

A hint of confusion. “I—”

“I saw it. It was the location of the fourth trial.”

He tried to hide his wince. I could practically hear him utter the curse: Nyaxia and her fucking sense of humor.

And yet that little flinch, the expression he mostly succeeded at hiding, hurt the most, because it confirmed what I didn’t want to believe.

I let out a pained, ugly laugh. “You weren’t going to tell me.”

And why wouldn’t he hide it? Just a few weeks until I was out of the Kejari, one way or another. I was isolated. He thought I didn’t even spend time with the other contestants.

“I have to make difficult decisions,” Vincent said. “This is war. The Rishan were a threat. They attacked our eastern outposts. I needed a strong—”

“You were going to let me believe that they were still out there. That I could still go after them.”

Was it better or worse that he didn’t even deny it? “There was no use in you knowing the truth.”

“Just like there was no use in keeping them alive? Easier to just kill them all?”

His face hardened.

Vincent the father stepped back. Vincent the king stepped closer.

“The decisions that I make for my people and my kingdom are beyond your judgment.”

“For your people?”

I was lucky I was drunk on my own anger and hurt, or else I never would have been able to speak to him this way. Even now, the shock on his face had a part of me shrinking back. But another part of me liked it the same way I liked it when my blade hit a mark.

“Who are your people, exactly?” I snapped. “Are they the ones whose ashes are in that city? Those were my people, Vincent. And I—”

“I did what was right for my kingdom.”

“Salinae is part of your kingdom. Half a million people. I could have been one of them. It could have been me in those slums—”

“It was never going to be you.”

He always said that. But how could he not understand? It was pure chance that brought me to him that night, all those years ago. The fibers of fate twist a different way, and I never make it here at all.

“I am human, Vincent. I am human.” I said it twice, just because he never liked to hear it, never liked to acknowledge it. “I was born in Salinae, to human parents, to a family who—”

Vincent’s restraint rarely buckled. Now, it outright shattered, the wave of his temper unleashed.

“Family. What does that word mean? That you were yanked from between human legs? You don’t even remember them. If they had lived, they would not remember you. Perhaps they’d be grateful you were gone. What would you have been to them? Another unwanted child to keep alive? Or maybe another lost one to grieve, when the world inevitably crushed you.”

Each word buried deep in my chest, skewering another unspoken fear.

His lip curled with disgust. “And yet this is your dream? This is the life you long for? And what does that make me? The cruel man who ripped you away from—what, this great life of love? Is that how you see me? As a captor?”

I swallowed a writhing twist of guilt. Even through my anger, my impulse was to apologize to him—No, I’m sorry, that isn’t what I meant. I love you and I’m grateful and thank you for saving me.

But then, he strode to the door and threw it open so hard that the silver knobs banged against the wall. “Look,” he snarled.

He grabbed my wrist and dragged me down the hall to the railing that overlooked the feast hall. It was crowded, busy with men and women wearing the deep violet uniforms of Vincent’s Hiaj army. Long tables were set up below, dotted with overflowing plates. Most of the plates were untouched, though. Because instead, the warriors fed on the humans.

There were a dozen in that room alone. Some lying on the table, heads lolling, barely conscious. A few, clearly drained, slumped discarded against walls. Some had been bound to the table with rope. One man, who must have struggled fiercely, was pinned to the table with daggers piercing his flesh.

My chest burned. Stomach churned. I couldn’t breathe. Even swallowing would make me vomit. How long? How long had he been doing this? I wanted to deny it. Wanted to pretend I didn’t see it. This brutality was so much worse than anything I had witnessed in this castle before.

But it made sense, didn’t it? How does one feed one of the biggest armies in the world? How does one keep morale up when waging an endless war? How does one entice warriors who value nothing more than blood?

A nice perk of wartime, isn’t it? Endless death.

And perhaps it did not happen out in the open like this before. But maybe, like so much else, it had rotted beneath the surface, and I had chosen not to see it.

“Look, Oraya.” Vincent’s fingernails bruised my arm. “Look at them. These aren’t people. They are livestock. You never would have allowed yourself to be one of them, because you are better than them. I made you better. I gave you teeth and claws. I made your heart steel. Do not pity them. They are less than you.”

I couldn’t tear my gaze from the humans below. Their blood ran over the tables in rivers of crimson.

He was right. I would never be human like they were. Just as I would never be human like the people I saved in the slums, or the ones who occupied the pub I went to with Raihn.

Just as I never would be as human as Ilana.

And maybe that was a blessing in some ways. A curse in others. Maybe Vincent had stolen something precious from me as he stripped away my humanity.

And I’d fucking let him.

Not only that, but I’d done such a wonderful job deceiving him that he thought I would see what he did when he showed me this sea of savagery.

My eyes stung. I wrenched my hand from his grip, turning away from the feast and retreating down the hall. “You lied to me.”

“I indulged your childhood fantasies, knowing that one day you’d grow past them.”

He thought I would become like him, and I would no longer care, just as he no longer cared. But he was wrong. I thought of Raihn, who had been a vampire for more than two hundred years and yet still so clearly mourned his humanity with every heartbeat.

Suddenly, I mourned my humanity, too. I mourned it the way I mourned Ilana.

I stopped short just within Vincent’s office door. I turned to him, let out a trembling breath.

“Why do you want me to be your Coriatae?” I asked.

I knew the answer. Vincent wanted me in the Kejari, wanted me to become his Coriatae, because it was the only way to turn me into something acceptable for him to love.

My father loved me. I knew this. But he loved me in spite of what I was. Loved the parts of me that he could make like him.

Vincent’s jaw tightened. Again, a glimpse of the silent battle between king and father. He closed the door behind us and leaned against it. “Because I want you to fulfill your greatest potential,” he said, at last. “I want you to be strong. I want you to be powerful. And I want—I want you to be my daughter. In every sense. Because you are more like me than you ever have been like them, little serpent.”

He was right, and I hated it.

My voice was strangled, on the verge of breaking. “Today, I am ashamed of that.”